Wild but Effective – the Return of Intimidation Pitchers?

Reading the title of this post, you might be asking “Haven’t there always been intimidation pitchers?”. What I’m referring to, though, are pitchers who intimidate batters not only with their stuff, but also because the batter isn’t always sure where the next pitch may be headed.

To this point in the 2012 season, these three pitchers (min. 80 IP) are having dominating seasons, as evidenced by their ERAs and strikeout totals.

But, they’re also on pace for allowing 50% more walks than earned runs, something that hasn’t been accomplished by 3 pitchers in the same season in more than 20 years (if it happens this year, the trio will have to include someone other than Beachy, who was shelved for the year today pending Tommy John surgery).

After the jump, I’ll take a closer look at this unusual pitching profile.

Allowing 50% more walks than earned runs has happened only 12 times since 1980. These are the seasons.

Notice that all of these seasons are above 100 ERA+ and eight of them (two-thirds) have ERA+ of 125 or better. So, these pitchers were certainly effective, despite their wildness. And, wild they were – half of these seasons led the league in walks allowed. But, why do the walks not catch up with these guys?

The not surprising answer is that many of these pitchers were intimidators – guys who were tough to hit, piling up the strikeouts and economizing on the hits and HR allowed (if not on WHIP). The lowest K ratios on the list were by Jose de Jesus and Al Leiter (in 2004), yet Leiter was still above 6 SO/9, and de Jesus just a touch below that mark. Similarly, eight of the twelve allowed fewer hits than strikeouts, and all were below 1 HR/9. Being wild was almost an added benefit – discouraging batters from digging in and getting their best swings.

So, have these types of seasons always been this unusual (only 12 times in 32 years)? Here’s a table of such seasons by decade. Note that my K/9+ and BB/9+ metrics are simply the average for these seasons divided by average of MLB annual rates, times 100. Thus, numbers over 100 indicate more than the league average.

Decade

Seasons

Median ERA+

BB/9+

K/9+

Most Times

Earned Runs %

2001-2010

3

143

151

121

92.2%

1991-2000

7

129

160

130

Randy Johnson (2)

91.2%

1981-1990

2

119.5

137

164

89.6%

1971-1980

19

123

154

154

Nolan Ryan (7)

88.7%

1961-1970

21

135

131

132

Sam McDowell (4)

88.0%

1951-1960

18

125.5

145

137

Bob Turley (4)

88.6%

1941-1950

21

125

155

163

Hal Newhouser (4)

86.6%

1931-1940

5

140

160

187

Bob Feller (2)

85.8%

1921-1930

1

157

124

102

Sheriff Blake (1)

83.%

1911-1920

49

126

135

131

Jeff Tesreau (3)

75.9%

1901-1910

36

135

131

134

Ed Reulbach (5)

70.2%

So, there is quite a bit of fluctuation in how frequently these seasons occur, more especially if we consider that the seasons shown are raw totals and not normalized to the number of MLB teams in each decade. Also worth considering is that as the ratio of earned to total runs allowed has increased over time, this has made it somewhat more difficult to achieve the 50% margin of walks over earned runs, particularly in comparison to pitchers in the deadball era. Yet, the profile of a high strikeout, high walk and very good ERA pitcher relative to league average is consistent, albeit with very small sample sizes in some decades.

So, why such drastic fluctuation? I think a possible answer may be discerned from the following chart.

As the run environment increases, the tolerance for this type of pitcher diminishes. But, when runs start becoming harder to come by, this type of pitcher season returns. Ergo, those extra walks aren’t so concerning when runs are hard to come by. This also makes sense in a high run environment when minimizing baserunners becomes paramount. Perhaps also pitchers, consciously or otherwise, become not so precise with their pitches when runs are hard to come by.

You’ve noticed that I haven’t yet mentioned the current decade. There weren’t any such seasons last year – the pitchers who came closest were Tim Lincecum and Gio Gonzalez, each of whom fit the higher strikeout, higher walk, very good ERA profile. Now that it seems fairly evident that we are into a diminishing run environment, should we expect to start seeing these kinds of seasons more often? What do you think?

Because the verdict proved nothing. Only he “didn’t lie” to Congress, or whatever. DID NOT say he did NOT do roids/PED’s. Which of course EVERYONE (it seems) thinks. I don’t know how many articles I have read in the past 24 hours that start with……

“So now that Clemens has been found not guilty of using PED’s…….”

OR

“The HOF voters now will have to contend with the verdict that Clemens was clean…………”

WRONGGGGGGGGGGGG

That trial, along with basically every other trial held to show guilt by a sports figure, is a total waste of time and money.

I think Timmy’s statement, “few wanted to believe him,” is right. I expect the same people who didn’t believe him before won’t believe him now – the verdict wasn’t about belief, it was about proof. I’m inclined not to believe Clemens, but based on what I read about the trial evidence, I thought a guilty verdict would have been arbitrary.

Although my own suspicions and prejudices will make me hope that Clemens doesn’t get into the Hall on the first ballot, since Clemens never tested positive for PEDs I don’t see any justification for an actual Hall voter not to vote for him.

As for the merits of bringing the case, I think Congress was completely out of line investigating baseball and demanding sworn testimony such as Clemens’. Pursuing the perjury prosecution compounded that bad judgment, but Congress put the legal system in an untenable position by pursuing an investigation it did not need to undertake.

epm @8, great comment. Game is over for Clemens and put it in the W category. The government had its shot (twice, actually) and they were outgunned, out-lawyered, and outsmarted. And Congressional hearings ought to be reserved for serious stuff (like throwing games) and not just extended photo-ops of staged indignation. As to the HOF, I doubt this verdict, or pretty much anything else that could possibly come out about Clemens that we don’t already know or suspect, would change anyone’s mind.

Mike L- I agree with both you and epm that this was political grandstanding and little more. I also agree that this also does not clear Clemens of using PEDs in any way. I imagine that eventually both he and Bonds will probably make the Hall of Fame but I really doubt it will be on the first ballot. I’m much more doubtful about McGwire and Palmeiro and eventually Sosa’s chances.

Several prominent names on the leaders by decade come as no surprise but there were a few that didn’t make it that were (at least for me). I don’t think Sal Maglie or Don Drysdale even had 1 season with more walks than runs (much less 50% more). Gibson did multiple times but never enough to meet the criteria. I didn’t check Lefty Grove but he couldn’t have done it too often since the leader for the 30′s only did it twice and only 1 person met the criteria for the entire decade of the 20′s. I guess leading the league in HBP’s doesn’t necessarily mean you walk a lot of people.

Doug, I think that when you calculate the environment (as opposed to the type of pitcher), you do need to use runs, rather than earned runs, as you yourself seem to recognize.

When I run the figures using runs, rather than earned runs, for the environment, the correlation is much less obvious: the run averages I get (using your figures) are these – with the number of pitcher seasons divided by number of tems (more or less), so the figures are for ave. total runs and for the ave. of pitcher seasons per team:

While there’s certainly a dramatic effect after 1919, as we might expect, I’m not sure we see much later on that could not be accounted for by the drop off in total number of qualifiers per team, as relief pitching takes over from the ’80s on. The ’80s, for example, shows a 90% drop in such seasons, with only a 4% change in the run environment, and then the numbers are so small that the decade-to-decade correlations don’t seem meaningful, except as compared to the high IP era.

Good points epm, as usual. Thanks for running the normalized numbers using total runs :).

Clearly, these are tiny numbers and not a whole lot should be inferred from them. I think your observation about the pattern breaking down starting in the 80s, probably because of the change in the use of relief pitching, is very likely true. Such a sea change in pitcher usage would swamp (pardon the pun) a small effect (if there is one) like this. With starters seldom permitted to “get wild”, yielding to relivers early and often, those late inning walks when a pitcher is tiring would likely diminish significantly.